


A Pair of Exiles

by xspike4evax



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-01
Updated: 2017-04-01
Packaged: 2018-10-13 14:40:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10515786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xspike4evax/pseuds/xspike4evax
Summary: Willow reveals a secret to Spike





	

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Illicit from the bad_swa prompt table at LJ

“I’ve been lying to you.” There was a beat. “By omission.” 

“Have you now?” 

His tone was light, amused, interested; a chill ran beneath Willow’s skin. He wouldn’t be amused when she told him. 

Her curled arm rested beside her head where he could nuzzle at the soft skin of her inner arm. “What little Scooby secret ‘ave you been hidin’, hum?” He drew the skin between his lips with a sound of pleasure. “Tell Spike all about it.” 

Guilt clawed at her. Spike trusted her. He heard nothing more in her admission than she was keeping a confidence for a friend. He wasn’t the least bit interested in her friends. Any news of any worth Spike trusted her to tell him about. 

His leg hooked over hers, knee bending, thigh riding up to insert itself between hers and Willow’s legs tightened on him for a moment. Now was probably not the best time to bring this up, but she couldn’t hold it in any longer. She had made love with him first; it was wrong, but she couldn’t help herself. It might be the last time she got to lie in bed with Spike, there was no telling how he would react. 

Spike kissed her shoulder, his hands sliding along her stomach; the muscles contracting beneath his palm, the tension in her evident. He looked down at her, a frown marring his face to see her eyes closed and her face pinched and worried. This was no Scooby secret. This was something infinitely more and as much as he hated it, Spike shrank from hearing it. What could Willow possibly be keeping from him to make her look like that? 

He kept his voice warm and even. “What’s goin’ on, love?” 

Willow’s eyes remained closed, a small shudder of a breath leaving her. “I didn’t not tell you for the reasons you’ll think.” 

His thumb smoothed the soft arch of her eyebrow his posture relaxing a fraction. She wasn’t leaving him; nothing she could say would be as bad as the thought of her walking away from him. 

Her eyes opened, it took a huge effort, Spike could tell.

“I know....”

Spike waited patiently while she licked her lips, pulse dancing nervously at her throat; it was so enchanting his concentration wavered. 

“I know how to deactivate your chip.” 

Spike started, eyes moving swiftly from her pulse to her face; narrowing sharply. This wasn’t something new she had discovered, she had known about this for some time and hadn’t told him. Her nervousness and guilt now made sense. His initial thought was that she hadn’t told him in order to keep him tethered and tamed; but she had said her reasons weren’t what he thought they would be. Spike considered, working hard to keep his anger and annoyance in check. His girl had found a way to free him and she hadn’t immediately done so; it hurt, like fire on his heart. 

His voice was slow and measured. “Do you think I’ll hurt you?” 

“No.” Her response was swift, her hand finding his still resting on her stomach. She slid her fingers through his. “At least, not in the way you’re thinking.” 

“You either think I’d hurt you or you don’t.” 

She uncurled her arm, wrapping it around his shoulders stroking the soft hair at his nape. Spike’s eyes drifted to half mast as he absorbed the warm, soothing motion. Willow knew he liked her stroking his hair. It had surprised her, considering how fastidious he was about combing it into perfect furrows. 

“You being chip free, it scares me.” She saw him flinch and hurried to explain herself. “You don’t scare me, Spike. And I don’t mean that I think you’ll physically hurt me, or my friends; no matter how many times you say you’d like them all dead. I just....” she let out a heavy sigh. “It scares me that if you don’t have the chip, you’ll leave.” 

Blue eyes cloudy with confusion stared down at her as he propped his head in his hand and Willow fought the urge to wiggle as silence stretched between them.

At last he spoke. “Where am I goin?” 

“I don’t know. Just away from here. Maybe with.... I don’t know.” 

An eyebrow quirked; he could read her so easily. “Drusilla?” 

“Maybe. There won’t be anything stopping you.” 

“There’s you. I’m not the wolf.” His tone was terse his face hard and slightly irritated. “That’s why you’ve kept quiet; Drusilla.” 

She seemed to shrink in on herself, as though she were trying to make herself invisible; hide from what she was going to say next. “Being friends with Buffy, well, I’ve sort of made my peace with the idea that I might die at any moment. There’s monsters and demons and end of the world stuff, but none of it scares me anymore. The one thing that does scare me is that you’ll never love me the way you loved Drusilla.” 

“I won’t.” Spike could almost see the weight of his words crushing her like a grape beneath a rock. “I never could. You’re too different. A vampire and a human. Good and evil. It’s impossible to love you both the same way. It doesn’t make my feelings for you less real. It doesn’t mean I love you any less; just differently.”

Cupping her cheek, his thumb resting at the corner of her mouth, Spike kissed her forehead softly. “If I told you how I loved you, it would terrify you. I’m a vampire, a demon; I don’t see things the way you do. I don’t feel things the way you do. You could never understand how I love you and I don’t really have the words to explain it to you.” He stroked the corner of her mouth absently. “Drusilla isn’t a part of this any more than the wolf. It’s just us.” 

She smiled, it was like a ray of sunshine and Spike basked in it. He kissed her forehead again, brushing his fingers through her hair, pushing the heavy locks away from her neck and dipping his head to inhale her scent. It was always more potent where her hair had trapped her body heat against her skin. 

“I’ll deactivate the chip for you, Spike. I was always going to, it’s just that, well, I wanted to keep you a little bit longer in case you decided to leave.” 

“You think it’s goin’ to be that straight forward, huh? You deactivate the chip an’ we live happily ever after; home sweet Hellmouth.” 

She blanched, stomach knotting. “But I thought.... you said....” 

“The Slayer,” Spike said patiently. “She can’t ‘ave the Big Bad wanderin’ around her home town an’ do nothin’ about it, and Sunnydale is the Slayer’s turf. She’s gonna come after me, pet, all stakes blazin’. Can’t fault her for it. It’s what she does.”

She hadn’t thought it all through, Spike could tell by the expression on her face. Drusilla had been the road block, not her friends. His girl was a realist, she had to be with the life she led; but sometimes he thought she had a romanticised view of the world where their relationship was concerned. She hadn’t worried about telling her friends about them, she had been sure they would accept him, she had been sure they would be happy for her; she had been wrong, there had been all kinds of a to-do over them. Willow had eventually won the day, but it had taken some doing on her part. 

Spike knew she would not win this fight. There was too much history between him and the Slayer for Buffy to let him loose in Sunnydale without a chip to keep him in check.   
“We don’t ‘ave to stay.” He spoke with more confidence than he felt. Unchipping him was one thing. Leaving her life behind to be with him was another. She’d had the chance to leave the Slayer and go away to college but Willow had chosen to stay. If she hadn’t left Sunnydale for herself there wasn’t much chance she’d leave for him. 

Willow knew Spike was right, they would not be welcome in Sunnydale once he was back to his old self. “Where would we go?” 

His heart soared. Cloud nine was far below him. He could touch the sun and never burn. “Anywhere. Everywhere. The world’s yours, love.” 

“London. I want to see where you were born.” 

His face softened, his heart was marshmallow; ponce that he was. “London it is.” 

There was a gleam of excitement in her eyes, half the fun for her would be in the planning; Willow was that type of person. She would know exactly where she wanted to go and she would know exactly what she wanted to see when she was there. Spike’s lips twitched in spite of himself; William the Bloody following a sodding itinerary.


End file.
